Following up on Shedeur at Shriners … Even though he is not in uniform Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders remains the big story at this week’s East-West Shrine practices at North Texas in Dallas. Sanders, who also won’t play in the actual game on Thursday, has been meeting with teams, particularly those with early picks. That is probably not going to change the current sense that Sanders is arguably the most polarizing prospect in this year’s draft class, but we try to do here is sift through the tea leaves and whatever other clues are out there to try and figure out what’s actually going. And one of the clues we do have is quite simply who people are talking to because as a general rule busy team executives don’t like to waste a whole lot of time talking to players they have no shot at and instead focus on the prospects that are their legitimate targets. Of course, its hardly a perfect science and hardly guarantees anything on draft day because in the end due diligence can go both ways, but the fact that teams like Tennessee, Cleveland and the NY Giants, which have the first three picks in April’s first round, have also been the most focused on Sanders this week tends to suggest that at least at this time Sanders is very much in the mix to be selected in that area. The Titans, who have the first pick overall, for example, had pretty much their whole front office in Dallas over the weekend including GM Mike Borgonzi, head coach Brian Callahan, and president of football operations Chad Brinker. That’s a lot of people to bring to the Shrine game.
Of course, any team that selects Sanders is going to have to deal with dad Deion and the potential circus that that might entail. Interestingly, Deion is not at the Shrine game, although Dallas is where he maintains his main private residence. Teams have indicated, though, that Deion did regularly text and/or call Shedeur when they were meeting with the latter. And one potentially mitigating factor here is the sense that seems to be emerging that Shedeur himself is actually a pretty level-headed kid who has been a good teammate, checks of all the character intangibles boxes and mostly just wants to play. But stay tuned!
